Male and Female Judges in Morocco Dealing with Minor Marriages: Towards a Relational Understanding of Family Law

Rather than being an exception, judicial permission for minor marriage has become a rule in Morocco. Based on legal analysis and anthropological fieldwork in 2015, I show that the gender of the judge does not significantly contribute to the way the provision on minor marriage is implemented in Moroccan courthouses. Instead, I argue in favour of an approach that is grounded in a relational understanding of law. Both male and female judges were manoeuvring the internal incompatibilitiescontained within and between state laws, which are the result of external recognition—in other words, the recognition of other normative orders, notably customary law practices. This relational understanding of law, and the ambiguities it naturally results in, amounts to a better understanding of law in action than the distinction between an “ethic of justice” and an “ethic of care,” which highlights gender-specific ways of legal decision-making, which are not supported by the Moroccan case.NWOEffective Protection of Fundamental Rights in a pluralist worl